Single.Earth aims to replace carbon credits in Blockchain and make nature conservation profitable

The future of blockchain-based carbon credits is in doubt, but it is a new standard for biodiversity and carbon credits. The new standard comes from Single.Earth, which just emerged from stealth with a team of more than 20 researchers looking to find out the shortcomings of carbon credits.

Single.Earth came out of the understanding that classic carbon credits can help with climate change, but not biodiversity. Also, major carbon credit programs refuse tokenization. That left the market open for Single.Earth’s nature-backed MERIT token, which helps make conservation profitable and accessible.

With the MERIT token, small landowners gain access to the nature-based service market, which may have been out of reach before. In fact, the token and platform have already seen significant interest prior to their public release, including:

• 1,500+ landowners pre-registered for early access to Single.Earth
• 7600+ buyers on waiting list to buy MERIT
• 1M+ hectares (2.4M acres) of land added to the platform in the first five weeks

However, the MERIT token is more than just access. It is designed to reflect the value of nature on every piece of land on earth, attract investor interest and hold true value.

Andrus Aaslaid, CTO and co-founder of Single.Earth, explained: “We have created a digital twin of no less than a planet that reflects the value of ecosystem services to every piece of land on Earth.”

He continued, “We are one of the few companies today that knows how much forest there is on the planet and how much carbon these forests are sequestering at any given time. That’s a good start. It’s enough to start trading with the result of these models and get people who ‘own’ the trees and species to be rewarded for being good custodians of them.”

But the token takes things even further, moving beyond classic carbon instruments by looking beyond the forests and the carbon they sequester and taking into account the species and habitats. Single.Earth believes that the climate crises cannot be assessed without also assessing the loss of biological diversity, and seeing them as interconnected problems.

That’s where the MERIT token really comes in. The founders, Merit Valdsalu and Andrus Aaslaid, want to protect nature by making saving forests just as profitable as cutting them down. It incentivizes landowners and pays them to do nothing as long as the natural resources on the land remain in good health.

The tokens are issued based on the ecological value of the land, with a single MERIT token equivalent to 100 kg of CO2 captured in biodiversity. And in the next iteration, Single.Earth plans to take into account other parameters.

The current investors include EQT Ventures, Icebreaker.VC, Ragnar Sass and Martin Henk, the founders of Pipedrive.